


Special All the Same

by Evandar



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arranged Marriage, Community: hp_drizzle, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 11:59:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12481068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evandar/pseuds/Evandar
Summary: It’s raining the day that they sign the truce. It’s neither the most dramatic ceasefire, nor a particularly romantic wedding, but somehow it feels special all the same.





	Special All the Same

**Author's Note:**

> Written for HP-Drizzle 2017 for the prompt: Harry/Voldemort: It's raining hard the day they sign the truce.Maybe the truce includes a marriage clause to keep both sides from trying to back out. Or they sign the truce because they're already together.
> 
> Thank you so much to the mods for running this brilliant fest and for their endless patience. Thanks also to R for acting as sounding-board, and to S for her dedicated work as beta. Any remaining mistakes are my own. Thanks also go to C for reasons left unexplained.

They should have chosen a room with fewer windows, he thinks, but that this is being done in Dumbledore’s old office probably makes it more of a triumph in Tom’s mind. Not that, really, Tom looks like he’s paying all that much attention to the debate going on. He’s staring out of the closest window, watching the rain as it trickles down the glass. He can’t be looking beyond it – the view out of the window is of the dismal grey sky and the dark canopy of the Forbidden Forest stretching out into the distance. There’s nothing _but_ the rain.

Mostly ignored by the both of them, Lucius and Kingsley are going through the terms of the truce in front of a small audience of their respective followers. They’re discussing each point at length – points such as creature rights and Muggleborn integration and education all being read out loud and debated in the hope that someone, anyone, will snap and raise their wand and end it all. Kingsley’s beginning to sound a bit desperate, Harry thinks. He’s a good enough man that this has to be hurting him, even though he’d been one of the few Order members to see value in the war coming to an end even with Voldemort still alive.

The Dark Lord in question, staring out at the rain, begins to tap his long fingernails on the wood of Dumbledore’s desk. There’s no rhythm to the noise – it’s almost as if he’s been entranced by the sound of the raindrops and is trying to mimic it; the vibrations of the noise appealing to some reptilian instinct. Harry watches him. Watches the small scales of his skin glint in the lamplight; watches the tiny creases that appear and disappear at the corners of his eyes. The slight squinting is the most reaction he’s shown all afternoon – it only occurs when Lucius reads out a part of the contract that he doesn’t like.

Ownership of the school is briefly discussed: it was built, long ago, on Slytherin land and so Malfoy seems to be determined to win it back for his Lord. Kingsley, obviously, much prefers the neutrality that the contract states. There’s a pause while they wait for Voldemort to raise his voice and claim the school as his own, but it never comes. Voldemort just keeps clattering his fingers against the desk and staring out at the rain; the tiniest of smirks tilting the corner of his mouth.

School was a home for him, once. No more. He’s grown beyond the angry boy in the diary. How strange that even his most loyal follower doesn’t seem to recognise that when Harry can see it plain as day. Then again, he supposes, he shouldn’t be too surprised by Lucius’ ignorance; Dumbledore never saw it either.

His old headmaster is peering down at them all from his gilt frame, sad and frustrated. The only time Tom has raised his wand all day was to silence the portrait before negotiations began: some kind of final torture for the teacher who’d never really given him a chance.

“No objections,” Lucius notes. Kingsley gives the faintest sigh of relief before his breath catches in horror. He’s skipped ahead to the next and final clause of the contract. Harry feels his own mouth twist to mirror Voldemort’s expression before he forces the expression away. A display of neutrality is the most important part. Across from him, Tom finally tears his gaze away from the window. He catches Harry’s eye and winks.

Not long to go. 

“The final clause demands that the truce be sealed by the union of the ancient lines of Slytherin and Potter,” Lucius reads aloud. His voice is strained and Harry glances away from the Dark Lord long enough to see the horror on his face. The…distaste. Around them, Death Eaters and Order members and portraits alike appear stunned and horrified as if the idea is completely beyond them. Harry remains silent, though he knows that they all expect him to object. Voldemort, too, is quiet.

“My…Lord?” Lucius asks. “A marriage, my Lord?”

Harry has to wonder if he or Kingsley actually bothered to read the whole thing before this meeting, or whether they just picked out the bits that they liked in order to convince their fellows that the idea had merit. It isn’t as if he or Tom had slipped it in there while no one was looking; one of them hoping to start a fight with the other and duel to the death in a cramped and crowded office. It hadn’t exactly been a romantic proposal – Harry sincerely doubts that either of them are capable of anything resembling romance – but it had been weighed up and agreed upon by the two of them before being written down.

The clattering of Voldemort’s fingernails comes to an abrupt halt. “Is there a problem, Lucius?” he murmurs, drawing out the last letter into a soft and sinister hiss. Tension seems to crawl through the room; Harry can feel their witnesses shifting as their skins crawl and he lets his smile widen slightly as he leans back in his seat.

Lucius seems on the point of breaking. Of throwing down his copy of their truce and screaming that yes, in fact, something is wrong with it. He doesn’t. He glances from his Lord to Harry and seems to freeze at the sight of Harry’s smile. He clears his throat and looks back down at the contract; lowers it to the table slowly and smooths it out in an attempt to hide the fact that his hands are shaking. Poor Lucius, Harry thinks, looking away again – toward Voldemort and the rain-splattered glass of the window. It’s probably just as well that Tom had sacrificed Bella to a suicide mission or this whole thing wouldn’t have gone half as well.

“Harry?”

Hermione’s voice quavers. He grimaces slightly before turning in his seat to look at her. She’s white-faced and shaking; there are tears filling her big brown eyes, and even though he feels guilty about lying to her for so long, he can’t help but think that her reaction is a little excessive. He and Tom have had a private truce for long enough that any the thought of actually being afraid of Tom seems bizarre. Then again, their private truce has been _private_ ; they’ve still duelled in public – vicious things that have been more for show than anything else – and they’ve plotted and schemed against each other. Harry’s been captured more than once, only for Tom to put on some grandiose display for his followers – Harry putting on an even more ridiculous display of defiance – and then set him free with a chaste kiss to his scar.

Tom will never willingly harm his Horcrux.

He meets Hermione’s gaze and shrugs. “I just want everything to stop, Hermione,” he says. He’s not even lying, either. Their farce of a war has carried on too long and has taken too many lives – especially considering that the two main players have long-ago stopped trying to kill each other.

“But this?” she asks. “You can’t seriously be - . No, Harry. Not this.”

He shrugs again and turns back around. “Sorry, but I’ve already agreed,” he says. Tom has been watching him during his brief exchange, and he can see those faint, displeased creases at the corners of his eyes again. Harry grins at him. “Just as long as you’re not expecting flowers or anything,” he says.

The creases vanish, and a line of tension that Harry _hadn’t_ noticed seems to ease from Tom’s shoulders. “I will settle for peace,” he replies. “And quiet.” The last is said with a meaningful glance over Harry’s shoulder to the Order and Harry has to smother a laugh when he hears them collectively flinch.

He should be sorry for this, he supposes: should be sorry for the lies he’s told and the hurt that he’s caused, but he still can’t bring himself to be. Not when there’s a future stretching out before him; not when there’s a ceasefire just two signatures away.

Kingsley clears his throat. “It’s settled then?”

Harry takes the quill he offers and signs both copies of the contract. There’s a cut-off whine of protest from behind him, but he ignores it easily, holding out the quill to Voldemort instead. Long fingers brush against his own as the Dark Lord takes it, and his skin prickles at the touch. Not with fear or revulsion as their audience would no doubt imagine, but with desire and a sick kind of power. He’s Tom’s Horcrux, after all, and that’s given him the power to tame a Dark Lord – to hold him to his will. Almost.

He watches as Tom signs his name: _T. Marvolo Riddle_ in the same elegant scrawl that Harry remembers from the pages of the diary. And just like that, they’re at peace. Just like that, they’re effectively married.

It doesn’t feel any different, he thinks, looking away so that he can watch the rain drip down the glass. He doesn’t feel older or more mature or, in any sense, even slightly romantic. But, as he hears Voldemort begin to tap his fingers in time with the rain drops again, he thinks he might feel a little bit special all the same.


End file.
